My small team brought lap bead necklaces to our event for the first time this year and they were a HUGE success. Overwhelming success is more like it. We have a huge event with over 5,000 participants and I think we probably sold at least 300 necklaces... and could have sold many more but we ran out!!! Next year I'm planning on having 500 made in advance, at least.

I used Rexlace plastic lacing material for the necklaces and offered a variety of purple beads. For the mile marker beads I used silver or white, their choice. We set the beads out in baskets on a table by the track and that table was busy ALL night. We sold our last necklace at 5am and had people asking all the way up until 10:30am (our event ends at noon).

The way I did the necklaces was to cut a piece of plastic lacing (we used glow in the dark, silver sparkle and purple) the length of my outstreatched arms from fingertip to fingertip, as far as I could reach. They look l-o-n-g with no beads on them, but trust me, they fill up. People can always trim them later if they don't need them that long, or for kids. Anyway, so we cut the plastic lacing and then folded it in half, tying the cut ends into a tight knot (a single knot was fine, just pull it super tight so it doesn't unravel). We slipped a starter bead onto the knot (slipping the bead over the looped end, opposite the knot) and then wrapped each necklace up into a circle (we wrapped them around our hand) and tied them in the middle with a piece of purple ribbon. This kept the necklaces organized and they DIDN'T get tangled. We had them set out in a basket - very organized and clean.

We sold them for $3 each or 2 for $5 and had a lot of people tell us to just keep the change. We had a small 2' x 3' banner made up that said "Track Your Laps" Necklaces, How many laps will you walk? and hung that over our sales table. In the middle of the night and the next morning, it was so awesome to look out and see so many people walking the track with our necklaces on. =)

We had DOZENS of people stop to compliment the fundraiser and to tell us how they "walked so much more" because of them, or how they really inspired them to keep going. We had people thank us for staying up all night to staff the table, and how great it was to always have someone to say hi to every lap around the track. We even had people taking our photos with the banner and the necklaces - we were Relay celebrities!

THANK YOU to the original poster for this idea. It was a great success at the Salinas Relay and we'll be bringing it back year after year. Here are some of our ideas to improve it next year:

** Use a special star (or heart) shaped pony bead as the starter bead.
** Have special shapes for 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 mile beads. We had 2 people walk 25 miles over the course of the event.
** Change the color of the beads year to year so people can tell the difference
** Offer special charms for additional $$ to tie to the end of the necklace.
** Have a separate area for bead pick up instead of using the sales table - we had a lot of traffic jams during the busiest times and moved our beads toward the track mid-way through.
** Have a contest for the most laps walked with a prize donated by a local business. HONOR SYSTEM.

Thanks again - feel free to email me for questions or photos of our necklaces, I know it is hard to visualize without photos and some of the old photo links aren't working on this forum.

~ Melissa

This is such a great fundraising idea.  My team did this at our relay in Fillmore, CA last year and it was a big hit.  We just had a problem with our pre-tied strings getting tangled.  Does anybody have any suggestions on how to keep the strings from getting tangled into one giant knot?

Folks

The link that describes how to do the fundraiser, put together by Sarah Conlon, can be found at:

https://www.societylink.org/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_1607875_...

Good Luck!

We are doing this fundraiser for the first time as well and I will be sure to post a picture after our event, August 1-2. I found bead packs of 1000, for :

Weight: 0.65 pounds

The website is www.makingfriends.com. We are using purple, blue, and red, for Celebrate, Remember, and Fight Back. Hope this helps! What is everyone using for string?

Thanks,

Toni

One of the teams at our Relay does this event.  This is how they do it.  For either $.50 or $1.00 (can't remeber which one) walkers can purchase a string on a walk.  With each lap that is completed, the walker can pick a bead from the team that is selling the string.  Many of us collect the beads to keep track of how far our team walks.  Last year, one of the girls on our ROTC team walked 5 miles by herself, and she wasn't even there all night!!  She received an awesome reward from our local RFL chapter.  The beads are an awesome way to show people just how much we care about the cause. In tieing the necklaces, we didn't until the end of the event.  We would just hand off the necklace to the next person so we could keep going.  In all our Regal Eagle team (www.foe,com) walked around 32 miles all together (if I remember correctly).  Hope this provided some info. 

Ronna Willhite, Proud Prineville Eagles # 2555 Auxiliary Member/Officer, RFL Member, and Cancer Survivor